“They have given the government to the public now,” one anonymous voter told Reuters.

Both the Druk Phuensum Tshogpa (DPT) party, headed by former Prime Minister Jigmi Thinley, and the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), headed by the king’s uncle Sangay Ngedup, are devoutly royalist and insist that the democratic elections were the idea of the king.

However, the presence of the king's uncle in the PDP did not stop it losing 44 of the 47 parliamentary seats up for grabs, including Ngedup’s.

Bhutan-based paper Kuensel Online said of the country’s readiness to vote, “Most of us lack a basic understanding of national issues and … we have no ideological intentions as we cast our votes.”

The call for an election was the swan song of King Jigme Singye Wangchuck. After announcing the move toward democracy, he immediately began preparing his son Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck to take the throne.

The younger Wangchuck has stayed true to his father’s preference for “gross national happiness” rather than industrial development, keeping with anti-materialist Buddhist tenets central to Bhutanese culture.

The kingdom ended its formal isolation by joining the United Nations in 1971 and allowed foreign correspondents and tourists into the country three years later. But modernization and foreign influence is greatly restricted.

Only 6,000 tourists may visit per year—and only then after paying at least $200 a day for a visa. Television was not introduced until 1999 and citizens must wear national dress in public.

DPT Spokesperson Palden Tshering said, “It is truly amazing. The people have truly made their decision.” The DPT campaigned on a platform of economic development—an alluring message in a country where some 25 percent of the population lives below the poverty line.

The establishment of Tibetan Buddhism in the 9th century A.D. brought many monks to settle in the area now known as Bhutan. The country was united by Tibetan lama Ngawana Namgyal in 1616. He developed a legal code, undermined rival religious circles and established himself as ruler. However, after his death the country plunged into a civil war that lasted about 200 years until Ugyen Wangchuck, the patriarch of the current dynasty, secured power in 1885. He developed closer ties between Bhutan and India under the British Raj, and in 1907, Wangchuck was voted in as hereditary ruler. Three years later, the Treaty of Punakha, signed with the British, ensured that India under Britain would not meddle in Bhutanese domestic affairs if Bhutan would accept U.K. counsel for its foreign dealings. After India’s independence in 1947, the Indian government recognized Bhutan’s sovereignty.

The third king of the Wangchuck line, Jigme Dorji Wangchuck is considered “the father of modern Bhutan.” He made slavery illegal in 1958 and had Bhutan join the United Nations in 1971, formally ending the country’s policy of total isolation. Tourists and the foreign press were first allowed in the country in 1974.

In the early 1990s, the Bhutanese government forced several thousand ethnic Nepali citizens out of the country and into India. They were sent on to Nepal, where many of the refugees dwell in bamboo shacks in the eastern reaches of the country. Although Bhutan maintains that the Nepalis left voluntarily, one refugee recalls that “the army took all the people from their houses. On the way there were many police. We were forced to sign the document. They snapped our photos. The man told me to smile . . . He wanted to show that I was leaving my country willingly, happily.”

King Jigme Singye Wangchuck said in December 2005 that he would install a parliamentary democracy in 2008, at which moment he would abdicate all power to his son Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck. The BBC says that only 6,000 tourists are allowed into Bhutan per year, and that smoking is completely banned.

According to an April 30, 2006, article in Time magazine, Bhutan has no traffic lights and citizens are required to wear national dress while in public. “Gross national happiness” is the country’s economic motto. But according to Time, “The rich are not always happy, after all, while the happy generally consider themselves rich.”

To visit Bhutan, travelers must arrange for a visa with an official travel agent and spend $200 for each day to be spent in the country. With the exception of Indian citizens, foreigners can only enter the country through one of two checkpoints.

Kunzang Wangdi, Bhutan’s election commissioner, said that before the elections he expected a 70 percent voter turnout. After the polls had closed, he said that the country could “confirm that we are a democratic constitutional monarchy. So we have left one legacy behind and moving into a new era.”

The BBC’s Robin Lustig writes in a piece from May 2006 that King Jigme Singye Wangchuck felt confident that his subjects would take from modernity “what is good and turn away from what is bad.” The traditional Buddhist doctrine of rejecting materialism is at the heart of how the Bhutanese incorporate technology into their daily lives. However, since television was first introduced in 1999, commercials have tempted youth to stray from the Buddhist “middle path” and “a wrestling channel became so popular that it was taken off air.”

Kuensel Online, a Bhutan-based English-language newspaper, reflects on the preparedness of the nation’s electorate for its first elections. “Most of us lack a basic understanding of national issues and, in the absence of the relative ideological positions of the two parties, we have no ideological intentions as we cast our votes.”